How to choose board games for the office

Surely, most heads of small companies and HR managers of large corporations sooner or later ask themselves the question of how to rally a team of employees, build good not only working, but also friendly relations between colleagues. Various joint activities can serve to achieve this goal. People are the most important resource in any business, so you need to work on the atmosphere within your team. One of the most effective and cost-effective ways to organize team building is to conduct board games with the participation of employees. To ensure that board games are always in the public domain, and employees can organize themselves, you can create an office game library.

In today’s article, I will tell you which board games are best to start filling the game library in the office with. Consider the criteria that board games for the office must meet.

Maximum number of players
When choosing a board game for the office, pay attention to the number of players allowed. It is desirable that it be larger, because in this way more employees can play at the same time. On e-commerce sites, the number of players is usually denoted by a stickman icon, and the spacing next to the icon corresponds to the minimum and maximum number of players. If you choose the game from a regular store, this information can be found on the box. For example, Dixit Odyssey is a great game for up to 12 players. This is a game in which you have to come up with associations to surreal images, and, no less interesting, guess the associations of other players.

Party duration
Considering that most office games are played at lunchtime, the game shouldn’t be too long. It is optimal to start in the game library to have several games no more than 30–40 minutes long. The approximate time of the game can also be viewed on the game card in the online store. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that if you are playing for the first time, it will take time to understand the rules. Therefore, the next selection criterion is the threshold for entering the game.

Game entry threshold
By the threshold of entering the game, in this case, I mean the time it takes for a player to master the rules of a new game. In today’s variety of board games, there are examples of games, the rules for which are written on a heap of pages, and sometimes it takes hours to analyze. Of course, this isn’t the kind of game that should first appear in your office. It is advisable to select games with simple game mechanics. This will allow new players to easily and quickly join the game, and it will also not cause a protracted gameplay — when players spend a lot of time thinking about their move, making others bored. For example, the popular game “Uno” has very simple rules that can be explained to a new player in a couple of minutes. At the same time, up to 10 people can play it, and the games are very fast — 10–20 minutes. In addition, in this game you can make your own adjustments to the standard rules, this only makes it more fun.

Replay value
Replayability is a characteristic of a game that determines the degree to which people will be interested in playing the same game the second, third and subsequent times. For an office game library, it is important to select games with high replayability, since you buy these games, not rent them. An example of a game with very low replay value is Difference. The essence of the game is to find differences in several pictures. There are a limited number of pictures in the box, and having found the differences once, by the next time you already remember what they are, and it becomes uninteresting to play. The aforementioned Dixit game (basic set) has an average replay value. This is due to the fact that when playing with the same line-up for the third or fourth time, the players are already tired of the cards. This problem is solved by buying add-ons — Dixit has quite a lot of them (Dixit Quest, Dixit Travels and others), with their use the replayability increases significantly.

Dynamism of the game
As I mentioned earlier, in an office game there should be no daunting and varied options for a move, when one player “freezes” over them, and the rest get bored at this time. The game should be dynamic so that at every moment of the game the maximum number of players is involved in what is happening at the table. For example, the game Codenames is a great option. This is a team game in which the captain’s task is to combine several words on the table with one association, and the team’s task is to guess these words by association. By the way, this game is also good because up to 12 people can play it at once.

The intensity of passions in the game
Since we’re talking about choosing board games that foster good team relationships, I recommend choosing the games that are as friendly as possible. That is, I would not consider games like the Mafia for the office. Often people transfer their personal relationships to the Mafia, so usually such games do not help to unite the team, but on the contrary inflame the atmosphere. Of course, it all depends on your specific team, and perhaps all your employees are emotionally and intellectually mature people who are able to distinguish between relationships in life and in the game. In this case, no mafia will be an obstacle for you =).

General purpose of the game
As one of the options, I would suggest starting some kind of cooperative game in the office. Cooperative games are a type of game in which all participants are opposed not to each other, but to the game itself. In them, it is important to act together, to develop a common strategy, to help each other in every possible way in order to win the game. In these games, either everyone wins or everyone loses. As for me, the joint struggle against the game is real team building! The cooperative game “Forbidden Island” is simple and short in time. In it, a team of players lands on an island in the ocean in order to search for lost artifacts. Meanwhile, the island is gradually sinking into the water. The goal of the game is to collect all the artifacts and fly away from the island in full force until it finally goes under water. Exciting, isn’t it ?!

I am sure that following the principles described above, you will be able to choose the best games for your office. Good luck!

Original article by Onzella